Discussions are under way about building a new county jail in Yell County.

Yell County Judge Mark Thone said Wednesday a special combined meeting was held between the Yell County Quorum Court’s budget and law enforcement committees to discuss the plans for the new jail, and also discussed the possibility of increasing the county sales tax to aid in the funding of the project.

Should the proposal for the new jail be approved by the court, a general election for the approval of a county sales tax would be called. The proposed tax would consist of a three-fourths of cent sales tax for the required bond for construction, and a one-fourth of a cent county general tax for the operations and management.

The current sales tax in Yell County is 7 cents. The new tax proposal would raise that by a penny.

The proposal is currently being discussed with a bond company. Thone said the process to have the project approved is fairly long and could take several months to complete.

“Once the proposal is presented to the court, there will be three readings of the ordinance,” Thone said. “That’s three meetings. In other words, three months. If they approve the ordinance, then there is a 60-day waiting period before any further motions. After that, there has to be a special election to allow the public to vote on the proposed taxes. So we’re talking a decent time before anything takes place, if anything takes place.”

The proposed new jail would be larger than Yell County’s two current jails combined, and would be a modern facility compliant with federal requirements.

“One of our issues is space requirements,” Thone said. “We don’t have much space to house prisoners. Another issue that we are currently facing is the age of our jail system. It’s outdated, and that gives us some trouble. Our two jails have been in place since the 1970s.”

Thone said another issue related to the lack of space is the difficulty in separating prisoners according to the level of offense, as required by federal regulations.

“We can’t co-mingle prisoners,” Thonse said. “We don’t want to put someone who is charged with murder in the same place as a person charged with a lesser crime. The things is, we just don’t have the space available.”

Currently, both Yell County jails combined are only capable of holding a maximum of 20 to 25 prisoners, according to Thone. The proposed new jail would have a maximum capicity of 75, nearly twice that of both current jails combined.

The proposed site for the new jail would be in Danville, next to the courthouse.